Viscount Monckton gives a presentation during the 2007 Conference on Climate Change

"Considerable presence" of skeptics

Updated 7/17/2008
After publication of this story, the APS responded with a statement that its Physics and Society Forum is merely one unit within the APS, and its views do not reflect those of the Society at large.

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."

According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, "in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low."

Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain's Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth's recent warming. "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

quote: The earth is not increasing in mass. Yes there is a little equation E=mc^2 which obviously you know very little about. Are you assuming the energy from the sun is being converted to mass? Ok fine, let's go there. The amount of energy received by the sun per year is approximately 3850 zettajoules. Assume all of that energy is converted to mass. That would be an increase in mass of the earth of 4.28 * 10^7 kilograms per year according to E = mc^2. The mass of the earth is about 5.97 * 10^24 grams. That is about a 10^(-16)% change in mass per year. Or put another way, it would take about 1 quadrillion years for the mass of the earth to increase by 1%.

the earth is not increasing in mass? perhaps you should tell that to this guy:

as you can see the earth's mass (he mistakenly uses the word "weight" instead of "mass") increases by 1 quadrillionth of 1 percent per day NOT per year, and that's only from debris and particles that strike the earth, that's assuming zero energy/mass conversion takes place.

go to number 19 (Speed of Earth's Rotation Slowing?) and then number 24 (Weight Changes if Earth Stops Rotating) and for the coup de grace check out number 36 (Changes in the Earth-Sun Distance). there's plenty more there that adds support to my theory but allow me to just say: "checkmate".

quote: Your explanation of black hole formation is completely false. Stars lose mass as they age. They convert mass into energy. That is how they burn. Black holes form when the fuel of a very large star is consumed and there is not sufficient heat to keep the gravitational forces from collapsing the star. I will not go into the nuclear physics involved since obviously you need learn the basics first.

where did you get the idea that stars lose mass as they age? some links, the information taken together should be enough to convince you that a star's mass increases with time not decreases:

something else also just occurred to me, both the sun and the earth have very powerful magnetic fields (<---can you guess where i'm going with this?), i wonder if the two magnetic fields (assuming they had the correct polarization) could interact with sufficient strength to increase the amount of attraction between the earth and sun? if in fact they are strong enough, you would have a second force drawing the two together and another explanation for global warming (assuming it actually exists).

Ph.D. in Physics, huh? what clown school did you drop out from. same goes for the clown that agreed with you claiming a Master's in EE.

Well you obviously can't read or follow conversations longer that five words. So when did you drop out of the fifth grade?

As the previous conversation was about gaining mass due to energy absorption alone.He was isolating the affects of the earth gaining mass from energy only, NOT from ANY cosmic particles and it was a hypothetical calcluation in any case as he assumed 100% energy to mass conversion. Which does not happen right? right?

Would it not also be true to say that the magnetic fields are repelling one another instead of attracting? What of the outward force of the solar wind? What did does this even have to do with the conversation at hand? What is your degree from anyway? ITT Tech? Go back and learn how to read bozo.

quote: Well you obviously can't read or follow conversations longer that five words. So when did you drop out of the fifth grade?

when they skipped me ahead to the 6th grade.

quote: As the previous conversation was about gaining mass due to energy absorption alone. He was isolating the affects of the earth gaining mass from energy only, NOT from ANY cosmic particles and it was a hypothetical calcluation in any case as he assumed 100% energy to mass conversion. Which does not happen right? right?

wrong. i initially talked about a paper i wrote in college where i pointed out that if global warming does take place another, better, explanation was that earth's mass was increasing as a result of the increase in the earth's population.

2 posters wrote in to offer the opinion that the total earth mass remains constant and that the increase in the earth's population didn't require an increase in mass as people where simply composed of mass that was already here.

i pointed out a mechanism for the increase in mass, namely energy/mass conversion (not energy absorption, something quite different) and i also explained how the earth was not a closed system and it was constantly getting bombarded by mass (in the form of particles) of an extra-terrestrial origin. "he", our supposed Ph.D. in Physics, claimed that such a thing does not in fact take place and you agreed, which makes both of you imbeciles. i offered proof that it does in fact take place.

go back and reread my post and his reply and then start flapping your gums, ok fruitcake?

quote: Would it not also be true to say that the magnetic fields are repelling one another instead of attracting? What of the outward force of the solar wind? What did does this even have to do with the conversation at hand?

i'm sorry, i thought you said you had a Master's in EE, which i took to mean electrical engineering, silly me. were you absent the day they talked about magnetic fields? just so you know, it is not possible for 2 magnetic fields to simultaneously attract and repel one another, if you go back and reread what i wrote i was thinking out loud and wondering IF the earth's and the sun's magnetic fields had the correct orientation (i initially said "polarization" but orientation is a more accurate description) would they be strong enough to interact with one another at these distances and then opined that if the above 2 conditions were true then (and only then) we would have a second force drawing the earth closer to the sun, thus adding support for my alternate explanation of global warming.

Your observation on patent expiration has merit, and is an interesting topic for a paper. However it has been independently verified that CFCs do weaken the ozone layer.

As for the global warming issue, mainstream science in peer-reviewed publications does have a consensus that human activity is to blame for the increase in temperatures since the beginning of the industrial revolution. People that deny it usually have some reason for denying it, and I'm wondering why yours is. My guess is some pathological like of conspiracy theories, based on your patent observation ideas? Do some research, write papers about your findings, but never be afraid to be proven wrong.

Speaking to the physics that you mentioned... they were pretty bad.

According to Google, in order for a photon to have enough energy to spontaneously change into a particle with the mass of an electron, it must have an energy of 510,998.903 electron volts (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-... which would classify such a photon as a Gamma Ray (>~100,000 ev, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray). The sun does not produce much energy at those wavelengths- it's not nearly hot enough. The exceptions are sometimes in magnetic breaks in solar flares, and through normal radioactive decay, etc. Furthermore, the earth's atmosphere is opaque to gamma rays- they get absorbed by air way high up, which lets off that energy as mostly heat (see thermo sphere, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosphere). In short, gamma rays do not account for any significant changes in earth's mass. Why gamma rays and not some other type of photon that the sun outputs? Because you need a high enough energy density to create matter out of energy- all of the sunlight spread over the earth cannot be taken into account. That's like saying there's enough sunlight hitting the ocean to boil a thimble of water (which is obviously true), but why are the oceans still there? Because the light is spread out.

Anyway, I'm wandering. Next up: rocks and dust. In this, you are correct. Rocks and dust do enter the earth every day, adding to the earth's mass. The problem is, not enough to matter. The earth masses ~6x10^24kg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth) and according to your link (http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae75.... gets one quadrillionth of one percent of it's mass per day. So over one quadrillion days the mass will increase one percent. That's 2.73792575 * 10^12 years (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-... The earth has only been around for 4.6 * 10^9 years. So at that rate the earth has increased in mass by like one one-thousandth of one percent over it's ENTIRE SPAN OF EXISTENCE (Yes, early on there was a period of heavy bombardment, etc, but lets agree that the current rate has been fairly constant for at least the last billion years or so). Even if you consider that mass amount significant with respect to gravity (gravity is an extremely weak force!) then to say that it's significant over the last two hundred years is certainly folly. Solar tidal forces have certainly had more effect on the earth's orbit than any such mass increase.

Now, I'm no expert in orbital dynamics, but I do know that if you increase the speed of an orbiting object tangentially to it's center of orbit (push it "forward" along its orbital path) then you move to a higher, slower orbit. Slow down, and you sink inwards but move faster. It's not very intuitive, I know. If instead you do what's natural and try to accelerate directly away from the center of your orbit, all you'll do is make the orbit more elliptical. Adding mass does basically the same thing as adding speed, since basically you're adding a force (Force=Mass*Acceleration), it's going to hurt more if it hits you, etc.). So the adding mass to the earth would cause it to move away from the sun, having greater orbital energy but lower orbital velocity. Imagine a baseball on a string that you're spinning over your head. The string goes from your hand to the ball, and represents gravity. Your hand represents the sun, since it's in the center and it's pulling on the ball to keep it going in a circle. Now say I suddenly replace the baseball with a bowling ball. That's a lot more mass! You have to use a lot more force to keep it in the same small circle- it wants to move further out and go slower. Now, you'll probably argue that as the earth's mass increases so does its attraction to the sun (correct), which would cause it to move in towards the sun (incorrect). What that actually means is that the sun would "feel" the earth more, but what determines where you orbit isn't your mass, it's your orbital speed. That's why satellites and the moon and asteroids etc, can orbit the sun in about the same orbit as earth, without weighing nearly as much. You'll probably say that the moon orbits the earth, not the sun, but in actuality it orbits both. If the earth felt the sun's gravity but the moon did not, the earth's gravity wouldn't be nearly enough to hold the moon in orbit.

Okay, whew... getting to the end here. Now on to stars and black holes. Yes, stars do lose mass over their lifetimes. For one, as mentioned above, they're turning mass into energy all the time- that's what starlight is made of- and starlight obviously leaves the star. The sun loses 4 million tons of mass each second through fusion alone (http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronom... stars have "winds" of particles that leave them. The sun loses 6.7 billion tons per hour through the solar wind (http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronom... Stars vary greatly- larger stars are brighter and use their fuel faster, and have higher powered winds as well, and smaller stars are less bright, live longer, and have lower-powered winds. Also, as stars get old then swell into red giants, and at this point the star is so big (same gravity, larger area) it loses grasp of the outer layers and sloughs them off in a kind of super-solar-wind that produces planetary nebulae that you can see in Hubble Pics. So stars do lose mass as they age.

Now black holes. After the red giant phase, the largest stars can still have like 12 times the mass of the sun left, even after the red giant phase. When certain conditions are met, the star will explode as a supernova. During this process, the core of the star -still weighing several times the mass of the sun- gets squished by all of that energy into something smaller than a city. Now because it's so small, the forces of gravity acting on each individual particle are so great (because they're so close together and gravity weakens with distance) that even the neutrons (which are all that's left after the gravity has smushed the electrons into their respective protons) can't hold that core up and it collapses below what is called the Schwarzschild Radius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius) to form a black hole. So you see it's not that black holes have a lot of mass (the star that the black hole came from had much MORE mass than the black hole left behind), but it's because it's in such a small area that the black hole exists. In fact, many things can be made into a black hole if you were to smush them small enough. If you were to smush earth into a sphere smaller than its Schwarzschild Radius of about ~9mm then it would be a black hole, too. See this helpful video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2VcJy8dPUM.

Okay, hopefully we cleared a lot of things up here today, and we all learned something.

lets see, you don't mention which isotopes, so let's assume you mean the most common one:

1 hydrogen-1 (the most comment hydrogen isotope) atom has an atomic mass of 1.007825u, 1 helium-4 atom (the most common helium isotope on earth) has an atomic mass of 4.002602u, and 1 hydrogen molecule has an average molecular mass of 2 x 1.007825u or 2015650u.

The above is the basic proton-proton fusion reaction. (More to it as the sub atomic particles are not listed explicity.)As one He4 + the subatomic particles have less mass than 4 hydrogen atoms that difference in mass is what is converted to energy.

Give it up Jim. I cannot believe that anybody with any sort of science education could make so many moronic statements about science. Therefore, I am left with only one conclusion to make: deadrats is an internet troll whose only purpose in life is to stir up trouble and insult other users.

quote: This f**cking idiot has pissed me off so much I have to write another post.

So let me get this straight. The sun gains mass even thoughit loses mass due to fusion, loses mass due to solar flare coronal ejections, and loses mass due to the solar wind?

I have to say it again, you are an idiot

ok, let's go with your hypothesis that i am an idiot, explain something to me so that even i can understand it: stars collapse in on themselves to form black holes (not all stars, just some of them), can we both agree on that? when a star does become a black hole it's gravitational field is so strong that light can't escape it once it's within the schwarzschild radius (nor can anything else), can we agree on this?

here's a question for you numb nuts, if a star's gravity field isn't strong enough prevent light from escaping before it becomes a black hole and gravity is a function of mass:

Fg - (M1 * M2) / D^2 * G

and as you claim the star's mass doesn't increase, then how exactly does the strength of it's gravitational field not only increase but increase to the point where light can't even escape it.

i'm dying to hear your explanation.

oh, one more little tidbit for you, fusion does not result in a loss of mass but a net gain, that's why if you look up the atomic mass of hydrogen and the atomic mass of helium you find that helium is roughly 4+ times as massive as hydrogen.

ooh, i'm sure i just pissed you off even more, or perhaps what's really pissing you off is that fact that you realize that your degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

You are still an idiot, and not only that you don't seem to know it! The key is in the gravitation equation that you provided but evidently don't understand. Thus I will try to educate the ignorant.

Force of Gravity equation is typically expressed as

Fg = (G*M1*M2)/R^2

Where R is the radius, and M1 and M2 are the two masses involved.Fg is a function of both mass and the star's radius.

So as Mass gets larger Fg gets larger true, however that is not the only factor. As you can see the star's radius is in the divisor of the equation and is squared, so as it gets smaller it has a much much LARGER impact on Fg. (Duh!)The reason why a blackhole's gravity is so powerful, is due to the fact that an older star's fusion reaction can no longer overpower the star's gravity and the star's volume gets smaller and smaller. Thus, the star gets denser and denser, while at the same time the fusion reaction is still caausing mass loss.(If you don't know why look it up.) Eventually as R gets smaller the Fg (R2 is the dominant factor here.) gets so great that light cannot escape.

And as far as the proton-proton fusion reaction of stars, it takes three hydrogen atoms to form one helium3 atom, which is a net loss genius.In detailHydrogen's atomic weight is 1.0079, and 4 hydrogen atoms atomic weight is 4.0316The atomic weight of helium4 is 4.00260 which is a little less than 4 hydrogen atoms, this mass difference is converted to energy and some subatomic particles. End of story.

So deadrat stop trying to understand adult subjects until you grow up.

quote: the earth is not increasing in mass? perhaps you should tell that to this guy:

As I said in my post

quote: The earth is bombarded with cosmic dust and from ions from the sun, but the masses are insignificant and will not alter the orbital path of the earth in any measureable way.

So it looks like I agree with your link and the amount is insignificant.

quote: go to number 19 (Speed of Earth's Rotation Slowing?) and then number 24 (Weight Changes if Earth Stops Rotating) and for the coup de grace check out number 36 (Changes in the Earth-Sun Distance). there's plenty more there that adds support to my theory but allow me to just say: "checkmate".

number 19 says"The Earth's spin is slowing down by about 1.5 - 2 milliseconds per century, and that angular momentum is moving into the Moon's orbit, which is getting larger. The reason for this, and the reason a figure skater can only spin for so long, is friction. In the case of the skater, it's air resistance and friction with the ice. In the case of the Earth, it's the friction due to tides moving around the Earth."

Irrelevant to global warming or your crazy theory about the earth gaining mass.

#24 is about the apparent weight of objects on the earth and has nothing to do with the mass of the earth changing.

#36 is about cycles the earth follows in its orbit. This may be relevant to global warming but has nothing to do with the mass of the earth increasing.

quote: where did you get the idea that stars lose mass as they age? some links, the information taken together should be enough to convince you that a star's mass increases with time not decreases:

Gee I don't know, maybe it was something I always knew just like what your NASA link says:

"The final nucleus consists of two protons and two neutrons, a nucleus of the most common form of helium. The mass of this nucleus is slightly less than the mass of the four protons from which it forms. The lost mass is converted into energy. The amount of energy can be calculated from the German-born physicist Albert Einstein's famous equation E = mc-squared (E=mc2). In this equation, the symbol E represents the energy, m the mass that is covered, and c-squared (c2) the speed of light multiplied by itself."

"Although stars lose mass as they evolve, none lose enough to wind up anywhere near the mass of even the most massive planet."

Did you say something about checkmate?

You still have not explained the process of how energy from the sun is converted to mass on the earth. Is this a multi-photon process? What are the particles that are created? If this is something you can prove, you should get a Nobel prize. However, I have the feeling that you are just a crack pot.